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I doubt the answer will be specific to SF/fantasy, so you're likely to get a better answer on writers.stackexchange.com.
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Tony MeyerFeb 20 '11 at 9:30

i got an answer from an authoritative source, a publisher at SF publishing house TOR. This is commonplace in SF/F books, though it also of course occurs outside of SF/F. There is an accepted answer so please don't close.
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benstrawFeb 21 '11 at 21:24

2 Answers
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As Mike Scott says above, publishers and editors solicit favorable quotes from popular authors of work broadly similar to the book at hand. But that's not where all those quotes on book covers come from. Some are simply quotes from things authors have said in other public venues, like in the course of a review.

For instance, there's a quote from Stephen King lauding the science fiction writer Robert Charles Wilson; I've put it on the cover of several of Wilson's books. It's actually from an installment of King's column in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, where he was listing some of his favorite things in various categories; Wilson is his favorite SF writer, and he explained why. We never asked King's permission to quote from him, and he's never objected--our one-line quotation doesn't misrepresent King's opinion and presumably he's happy to stand by it.

Publishers send advance reading copies of books to other authors asking for their quotes. They're generally happy to provide favourable quotes, having benefitted from this practice themselves. No money changes hands.